Nigel has released his literary tourist audit of Rochester, NY.
Category Archives: Bookselling
To What End, Publicity?
Maybe publicity doesn’t lead to book sales. Maybe an author sitting on the couch for seven minutes with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News doesn’t sell 10,000 of his books. Are book sales the whole ballgame?
Elsewhere on the web, Lindsay Buroker asks what’s a good price for ebooks? Are new authors pricing their books at $0.99 hurting everyone?
Is This A Dagger Which I See Before Me?
Petrona has a round-up of books eligible for this year’s CWA International Dagger award. There are many Scandinavian titles. The 2011 CWA International Dagger was given to Anders Roslund & Börge Hellström for their novel, Three Seconds
Say That Again?
Bookseller and poet Jen Campbell has made a name for herself by quoting odd and often hilarious things people say in bookshops. For example: “What books could I buy to make guests look at my bookshelf and think: ’Wow, that guy’s intelligent’?”
Now, that question makes complete sense to me. I remember a speaker, perhaps Ravi Zacharias, saying he overheard someone ask for so many feet of books. It didn’t matter what types of books really, just important looking ones to fill up a shelf behind a union leader’s desk to make him look educated when he spoke to business owners.
Certain Words Need Not Apply
We’ve talked about censorship here before. We’ve noted often that when a government stops a book from being printed or distributed, that’s censorship, but when a parent complains about the appropriateness of a book for her child, that’s not. We hope parents are actually morally and reasonably when they question some of the recommended reading at school. Doesn’t always happen, of course. Recently a teacher was investigated by school and community law enforcement because a parent complained that Ender’s Game is pornographic. Help us.
BTW, you can buy Ender’s Game (with cool cover art) here
But we usually don’t talk about bookstores that won’t sell perfectly good books because of one or more select words. Caryn Rivadeneira writes about a few of these examples, particularly an argument author Rachel Held Evens had with her publisher. In short, Thomas Nelson wouldn’t let her use the word vagina.
Rivadeneira notes the difficulties. “They are businesses after all, and to be successful, businesses need to sell products their customers will read without getting up in arms. The problem with Vagina-gate and similar forms of “censorship” is that, in an attempt to protect customers, publishers and bookstores are making it a lot harder for writers to tell the stories God has called them to write. And when Christians are barred by other Christians from serving God, it dishonors God. In fact, it’s sin.”
I think she’s right.
BTW, you can pre-order Evans’ book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master
Christianity Today Book Awards
Christianity Today has 12 book awards, mostly for Christian non-fiction. There are many interesting titles, and it’s curious that the runner-up fiction award goes to a translation of a Dostoevsky work.
Making Money Within Book Culture
I can’t say I fully understand this point of view, but it does seem respectable. Ron Hogan talks about making money from your book reviews and promotions in light of the paid promotions done through the #FridayReads hashtag on Twitter. I suppose it’s all about the appearance of promoting something because a publisher asked you to, not because you actually like it, but if a publisher asks you to potentially promote something you would likely not have discovered on your own and that you do, in fact, like, the problem seems only one of appearance.
Maybe I’m just not a member of the anti-commercial club.
Snippet One, Troll Valley
[To whet your appetite for my new novel, which I hope (but can’t promise) to have out by Christmas, here’s a snippet. I’ll post them here from time to time until the book is released. Every Friday, and possibly more if I’m feeling generous. lw]
PROLOGUE:
THE PRESENT.
Shane Anderson woke up in a room he didn’t recognize. He had no idea where he was, and no idea who was with him.
This was not unusual for him.
Never before, however, had he awakened in an attic room (he could tell by the slanted ceiling) in what was clearly a very old house, with no company but a very big Native American in a gray sweat suit, sitting in an armchair and reading a Bible.
“Where am I?” Shane asked. The bed he lay in didn’t go with the room, which had old-fashioned figured wallpaper and carved woodwork around the doors and windows. It was a modern adjustable bed, with some kind of control panel on a side rail. A hospital bed.
The Native American looked up from his reading and said, “You’re home. Or it will be your home someday. At least legally. If you don’t O. D. or break your neck.”
“The big house in Epsom? What the—ʺ
“No profanity, son. I have your mother’s instructions to wash your mouth out with soap if you speak profanities or curse. It’s one of the things in your life she’s particularly concerned about.” Continue reading Snippet One, Troll Valley
The Worst Business in the World
“As early as 1896, Publisher’s Weekly wondered whether the book business was ‘A Doomed Calling’—a question that, by the late nineteenth century, had already become a cliché.”
Ben Tarnoff says people in the book business have been complaining about it’s final curtain drop for over a century. Back in Mark Twain’s day, they worried the subscription model would ruin everything. Today, it’s e-books. Tomorrow, it will be holographic gaming galleries.
Nobels and Americans
D.G. Myers believes Philip Roth is the greatest living novelist, and he hasn’t gotten a Nobel for Literature. Does he or any American deserve one?
American novelists, according to Nazaryan, have only themselves to blame for not winning a Nobel since 1993. And he knows exactly what American literature needs:
America needs an Obama des letters [sic], a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th — or even the 19th. One who is not stuck in the Cold War or the gun-slinging West or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark — or mired in the claustrophobia of familial dramas. What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn, N.Y.?